Many client applications do not offer a convenient way to quickly retrieve documents. For example, mail clients (e.g., Lotus Notes (International Business Machines, Armonk, N.Y.) and Microsoft Outlook (Microsoft Corporation, Redmond, Wash.)) do not provide easy access to specific messages maintained in a mailbox. To organize messages for later retrieval users often maintain multiple mail folders. Each folder contains emails that share a common characteristic. For example, a folder can hold messages relating to a specific task or project. Ideally a user seeking to obtain an earlier message knows which folder contains that message. If the number of folders is low, then there can be numerous messages in each folder. Significant user effort is required to sort through messages in the folder to find the message of interest. In other situations, users may not remember to which folder they moved the message. Moreover, user interfaces typically only permit a user to find a raw word in the selected folder or to sort the first column and then jump to the first of the emails starting with a predetermined prefix.
The user interfaces provided in typical email client applications permit typed input in a search bar that is visible in the main application window or is otherwise accessible from the main application window. Using this search bar it is generally only possible to search for plain text in any part (e.g., header or body) of the email document. Parametric searches are generally implemented using complex user interfaces.
Parametric searches are significantly different than searches implemented on the Internet. Web search engines often perform searches for information which may not exist. Email message searches, however, are primarily implemented for retrieval. The user knows that the sought email message exists and whether the email message was sent or received. Frequently, the user knows the name of the sender or the recipient and the time period during which the email message was transmitted or received. These parameters significantly reduce the quantity of emails in the search results. Unfortunately, the parameters are not easily and quickly defined in the search statement. If a parametric search is required, the user navigates through multiple pop-up boxes to generate the proper search statement.
What is needed is a method for generating parametric search statements for finding and retrieving emails and other documents. The present invention satisfies this need and provides additional advantages.